How Apple iPhones copilot for the blind

March 25, 2016

Transcript

My name's David Woodbridge and I work as an assistant technology consultant at Vision Australia about ten years ago.
I used to carry about eight different devices around, such things as light detection to tell the lights are on and off.
Now Nowadays I've got all those different products in one device that I can use every day.
The best thing about the iPhone and the watch that makes it work is they've got accessibility built into them, particularly the over/ because I can touch the screen or I can flick my finger left and right To move item by item.
And then once I've heard the item that I want to use, I can do a one finger double tap any where on the screen, and that'll activate the last item that just spoke to me.
One of the items to do with travel particularly with trains, is finding out what platform the train is leaving off.
And rather than trying to find somebody to ask, if I use an app like Trippy, I can find out what time the train leaves and what platform it's leaving off, what platform the train's just arrived on.
I know the station.
I can tell where the stairs are and get off the station properly.
When you go shopping, when you want to go out and grab a cup of coffee and you've got a couple of nights in your pocket.
Being able to just quickly get at your iPhone and run an app looking at money identification and finding out what the denominations are before you go and buy something, make things somewhat more streamlined.
This, in general, allows me to be more independent because the apps I can use allow me to do everyday things that everyone else would do.
I just use a phone to do it [UNKNOWN] decided somebody it's accessibility.
I'm like, I don't need that, I'm not one of those people type things.
Why build inaccessibility to any product at any time in anybody's life?
It's not that it will cause you to have Some issues getting around, or getting access to information.
The same for somebody who has got that particular condition, if you wanna put it that way, all the time.
Universal access and universal design is a better way of saying accessibility, cuz accessibility sounds like it's for a small minority of people.
it's a universal design for everybody.
That's fantastic, what does it do?